China Mobile 5G Innovation Center Adds Qorvo as Member

US RF solutions supplier Qorvo is joining the China Mobile 5G Innovation Center as its first RF solutions provider. 5G is expected to utilize spectrum ranging from sub 6-GHz bands (starting at 600MHz) to mmWave bands (up to 80GHz) which makes RF a complex and essential part of any 5G solution. The move by China Mobile underscores the importance of RF in general and of Qorvo’s advanced module packaging and steerable antenna arrays technologies in particular, on the road to 5G.

Qorvo is a Leading RF Partner of China Mobile: US Qorvo — which provides core technologies and RF solutions for mobile, infrastructure and defense applications — is announcing that it has been selected as the first RF supplier to join the China Mobile 5G Innovation Center. Qorvo says that its RF solutions simplify design, reduce product footprint, conserve power, improve system performance and accelerate the adoption of carrier aggregation, steerable antenna arrays and packaging. China Mobile has also reported to be working with RF solutions suppliers MACOM, Murata and TI at 5G chipset level for 3D-MIMO, high frequency (clocks and timing) and other advanced RF domain processing in 5G issues.

The Role of China Mobile 5G Innovation Center: The center was launched last year with 11 partners, aims to propel 5G development for China – the world’s largest mobile market – addressing areas such as Communication Capabilities, Internet of Things, Connected Cars, Industrial Internet, Cloud Robotics, Virtual Reality, and Augmented Reality. The center is driving the development of 5G end-to-end capabilities in all these areas. The center, planned as a network of several open laboratories the collaborate via the Open Lab platform, carries out the design and development of 5G innovation product, validation and optimization of key technologies, and exploration and incubation of business models. The center’s Core Laboratory is in China Mobile Research Institute in Beijing. Relying on 5G Innovation Center, China Mobile will be actively involved in 5G trials organized by IMT-2020 (5G) Promotion Group and promote 5G candidate technologies’ validation, standardization, industrial chain construction and product maturity to meet the requirement of 5G commercial deployment in 2020.

Qorvo says that its membership of the China Mobile 5G Innovation Center complements other of its 5G initiatives such as defining 5G standards as a delegate to 3GPP (the 3rd Generation Partnership Program) and supporting more than twenty 5G field trials with global wireless infrastructure companies. “This is a unique opportunity to engage with the world’s largest mobile operator and its ecosystem partners,” comments Eric Creviston, president of Qorvo’s Mobile Products Group. “By participating in development at the Center’s Open Labs and in field trials, our goal is to accelerate the creation and delivery of market-leading 5G solutions.”

Strategy Analytics estimates that the number of 5G connections will reach 690 million by 2025, with more than 300 million 5G handsets, including a substantial number in China.